Thursday, April 28, 2005

The Ultimate Blogger is a 6-week competition between 12 people to be the best blogger in order to win a $500 dollar prize package. Each week consists of two challenges and two eliminations. The person or team that wins the challenge is safe, forcing the other players to vote someone out of the game. The last blogger remaining will be crowned The Ultimate Blogger and win the prize package.

I did put in an application to be one of the 12, as though I don't already have enough blogs, or things to do with my time. I'm sure I don't have a chance against some of the weird, devoted bloggers out there, anyway.

I forgot to mention of the most irritating parts of the experience described in the post below. (This is what happens when you're so sick it takes you three days to type out a blog entry.) During the course of our day at Coachella, I also found out that I was allergic to the desert. So, add bazooka-sneezing to the list of things I was doing while waiting in non-moving food lines.

Saturday, April 23, 2005

Well, I've been sick for the past two days and have therefore accomplished primarily just sleeping, coughing, sweating profusely, and the like. However, I have also been re-reading the Hitchhiker's Guide books in preparation for the upcoming movie, which I'm very excited about. There are, in my mind, two really good reasons why I want to see this movie, regardless of any areas in which the creators might have erred (Zaphod with only one head and two arms? Hello!).

Firstly, they have cast Martin Freeman as Arthur Dent. You may know him as Tim from the BBC version of The Office. If you enjoyed The Office at all, you'll know why this is a good casting decision.

Secondly--though at first I was surprised to see this--they have cast Mos Def as Ford Prefect. Now, I really like Mos Def and respect his music, so I'll be very interested to see him act. But most of all, I will always hold him in a special place in my heart because, indirectly, his music saved my life.

It was, um, around the year 2000 or so, maybe before. Rob and I had driven down to Southern California to stay with my parents, and then from there we drove with some friends of his deep into the desert to attend the Coachella Music Festival. After spending a long, hot day in the sun, listening to lots of music, good and bad, and becoming very intoxicated--a situation which I will not elaborate on but suffice it to say that Lucy was indeed in the sky with diamonds--we decided we really needed to eat something, and not to be listening to the painfully loud techno music which had recently begun on the main stage.

Unfortunately, there had been some poor planning on the part of the concert venue, which had apparently run out of food and was in the process of getting more delivered. Meanwhile, people were waiting in excruciatingly long food lines at all of the vendors. As we were highly intoxicated and in dire need of food, and the loud, thumping dance music was causing us physical and aural pain, and we were unhappy about waiting in line in close proximity to a bunch of disturbing people who appeared to be even more intoxicated than we were, when Mos Def came onto the side stage nearby it was like a nice, calming raft to cling to in the midst of an ocean of disturbing sensory input. His music was good--excellent, in fact--and made it possible to bear the long wait in line for our salad and garlic fries.

So Mos Def saved the day. Because of this, I am more than willing to give him a chance in portraying Ford Prefect.

Saturday, April 16, 2005

Yup. I've been so busy that I've been running around like a...you know. Here is a brief list of the some of the things that I have done this week:

Watched Rob get awarded tenure. Yay! Tenured before he turns thirty!

Made 60+ phone calls (as part of my temp job at the Office of Education). Making calls is possibly my least favorite activity on this earth, as those of you whom I never call are well aware. (You know I still love you, right?)

Thursday, April 07, 2005

Today I was listening to the messages on the answering machine, and in the process of deleting a recorded political ad, the erase button decided to register two taps instead of one. So I accidentally deleted somebody's message. If you happen to be reading this, and you called me today and left a message, and you aren't a prerecorded message machine or Tom D., then you might want to call me again.

I have this horrible fear of somebody really important having called me, like the literary agent (fat chance--it hasn't even been a week since my manuscript arrived) and me never knowing about it. Or a family member or friend who I'm supposed to keep in touch with but who has (unbeknownst to them) fallen prey to my neurotic hatred of making phone calls.

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Aside from a rather strange and relaxing weekend-like interlude yesterday, it seems like every waking minute has been crammed for the past several days. If it's not one thing, it's another. Even my leisure activities seem like work. For example, this past weekend was a veritable sports-stravaganza. We went to an Earthquakes soccer game on Saturday evening (Earthquakes tie...), and then on Sunday midday we drove to Sacramento for a Kings game (Kings lose...).

Then Monday I can't remember what I did. I think I may have done about a month's worth of shopping at Costco and then I went to the library for a refill of YA books. Yeah, that's it. And four loads of laundry. And some dishes. Tuesday we visited Rob's sister and baby Miles for a while and brought them some food which I spent Tuesday a.m. making, and then went out for dinner with Rob's parents and watched a basketball game with them on TV. That was the strangely weekend-like part. Got home around tennish and then watched some more TV for a while before going to bed and then getting up at 6:50 am for a new temp job which started today. Back at the Office of Education. About five days in a row at first, doing data entry and making graphs, and then intermittent minute-taking on scattered days between now and June. It's the intermittent part I'm looking forward to.

As for tonight...interviewing the artist that collaborated with my friend Shin Yu on her new, forthcoming book of poems. I'm trying to totally revamp the article so I can re-submit it to Poets & Writers. I will get an article...or short story...or something--ANYTHING--published someday, dammit; I will!

I write. I create. I put some of that here. Read at your own risk. If there were an ampersand code for a little skull-and-crossbones, I'd totally be using it right now.

The term "aqua fortis" was the alchemical nomenclature for nitric acid, a necessary component in etching onto zinc plates for intaglio printmaking. I now use copper plates and ferric chloride almost exclusively, as they are much less toxic, but I still like the sound of "aqua fortis."